PPM41, read back in my office at Hofstra, is one of those that makes me go, "hmmmm..." with apologies to the appropriately named Freedom Williams and collaborator David Sweat. Why? Because it happened, again, that the copy of the originally written and typed material was incomplete, that is, the third page was missing. Luckily I'm on my office today, so I could go to the original print-out (p. 72) of the manuscript typed and printed ten years ago. However, and here's where it makes me go hmmmmm....., the 'missing' page 72 turned out to be the exact place where chapter 3 "The Way of Lao Tzu," in Being and Learning ends and chapter 4 "Plato's 'Allegory of the Cave'," begins. (The are pages 67 & 69 in Being and Learning). So the original meditation written on March 25, 2004 was the threshold point between the two chapters, but the actual transition happens in the middle of the meditation. And besides it being 'evocative' (to use the language I use in this experiment) that the page was missing and I had to go to the original (originary?) typed page, it is perhaps even more evocative and thought provoking, that is, an effacement with Being's presencing, that the threshold point between chaps 3 & 4, which happens in middle of the March 25, 2004 meditation -- on the exact page that was 'missing' and that had to be read, for the first time in 2.0, in its original form -- that threshold happens with the word 'Passage.' The actual transition happens in the following manner. I conclude chapter 3 as follows: "The pas-sage of enlightenment is the path broken on the unstable ground by the dialogue evoked through the offering of the Sage. The Sage leads the apprentices on the way through this passage. The Sage's saying opens the way to the pas-Sage by offering the 'proper' gift to the people. This gift of teachability, as a re-calling, is an offering of 'what belongs' to them. This gift is thus a 're-turning' of what was always already theirs. The turning around of the apprentices is a re-turning of what belongs to them. The reception of this gift [the re-turn to them of what was/is already theirs] teach-ability identifies the movement of Learning, the purposeful wandering together, which, when it gets underway, moves along the essential passage-way. Mindfulness is produced in the wandering along this passage-way. To be possessed by the spirit of freedom is to become mindful. Mindfulness emerges as the outcome of Learning. The truth begotten in the modality of poetic dialogue is mindfulness. Learning begets mindfulness."(p.66 in Being and Learning) (For context on my use of 'mindfulness': earlier in PPM41 (p.65), I cite Heidegger: "Philosophy is the immediate, useless, but at the same time masterful knowing within mindfulness. Mindfulness is inquiring into the meaning (cf. Being and Time), i.e., into the truth of be-ing. Inquiring into the truth is leaning into its essential and thus into be-ing itself." From his essay, 'Plato's Doctrine of Truth.')
In turn, the fourth chapter, on Plato's 'Allegory of the Cave,' begins: "'Passage' denotes a portion or section of a written work. It also means 'the act or an instance of passing from one place, condition, etc., to another,' yet also 'the permission, right, or freedom to pass.' It denotes an opening or entrance through which one may pass, hence a 'passage way' is 'a way for passing through or out of something.' Passage can also mean 'a voyage by water or air from one point to another.'"(Being and Learning, p. 69)
And, with that, we re-turn to the cave!
In turn, the fourth chapter, on Plato's 'Allegory of the Cave,' begins: "'Passage' denotes a portion or section of a written work. It also means 'the act or an instance of passing from one place, condition, etc., to another,' yet also 'the permission, right, or freedom to pass.' It denotes an opening or entrance through which one may pass, hence a 'passage way' is 'a way for passing through or out of something.' Passage can also mean 'a voyage by water or air from one point to another.'"(Being and Learning, p. 69)
And, with that, we re-turn to the cave!
3.0 - (from Forage Bakery, still without electricity on Turkey Hill) Just yesterday I locked into Lao Tzu, and the day before noted that the chapter from 'Being and Learning' that is organized under his name was blended with Heidegger producing a hybrid discourse that's been explored before, but so far as I know has never been taken up in a poetic praxis manner, which is to say, explored through a writing that engages the overlap between the two. This issue of writing from outside what one is taking up, in this sense keeping the discourse at arm's length, came up at PES Salt Lake City with a colleagues paper on contemplative reading. Her writing was not contemplative, and certainly not following the slower pace she identified with contemplative reading. Poetic praxis enacts the discourse, and perhaps reënacts or imitates it. I'm comfortable with that. After discovering last summer the presence of mimesis in the Turkey Hill forest, this most natural phenomenon has piqued my interest to the point that I believe it may be a fundamental logic, so fundamental that we forget it's presence. And perhaps in the Routledge book, when I mirror apathetic reading with it's pair in writing, I will name the writing equivalent of apathetic reading as mimetic writing.
ReplyDeleteAs noted in the 2.0 commentary, today's original meditation marks the threshold from the chapter on Lao Tzu and the one on Plato's Allegory of the Cave. And of course the key trope that links the two is "passage": "The Sage leads the apprentices on the way through this passage," I wrote 20 years ago today. Passage as path. Passage as portal or threshold. Passage as movement from the familiar to the unfamiliar. Passage as the way into the Open region. And perhaps Passage as the Abyss in the sense that Glissant describes it. And to reiterate the fragment from the beginning of chapter 4, cited above, "'Passage' denotes a portion or section of a written work. It also means 'the act or an instance of passing from one place, condition, etc., to another,' yet also 'the permission, right, or freedom to pass.' It denotes an opening or entrance through which one may pass, hence a 'passage way' is 'a way for passing through or out of something.' Passage can also mean 'a voyage by water or air from one point to another.'"(Being and Learning, p. 69)